


The World Beneath the Water

by Lefaym



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Bittersweet, Childhood Friendship, F/M, Gen, Memories, Rilla of Ingleside, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lefaym/pseuds/Lefaym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A world without poetry is unfathomable to Walter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Beneath the Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Sheafromtherdon!
> 
> My thanks to lionessvalenti for the beta!

They have forty-eight hours leave in London, and on the ferry across the Channel, the other men are already talking about the girls in Soho, so pretty and warm; a fine way to spend one’s wages. Some of the boys have sweethearts at home, and fiancées, and wives, but it doesn’t matter -- it doesn’t stop the crude gestures and even cruder words. Walter can’t bring himself to join in, not even when they nudge him and make jokes about what (or whom) he might prefer instead. He knows he won’t join them later, when they go to make good on their boasts.

It’s not that he doesn’t understand. After everything they’ve seen on the front, how can he fail to understand their need to reach for life wherever they find it, no matter how crude or crass it might be? Jem would do it if he were here, Walter thinks, and Jerry too, probably. They would do it because they needed something to take away the horror of it all, and they would never mention it to Faith or Nan when they finally got home, because there were some things about war that you couldn’t explain to anyone. 

Some terrible, base part of Walter wishes he could go along with it, that he could escape like this with the other lads, but -- well, the Piper won’t lead Walter down that road, no matter where he takes the others. And truly, Walter doesn’t regret it. It might be sweet for a moment, but there would be no poetry in it, not for him.

Walter has never been able to fathom life without poetry. The war has already taken so much poetry from him -- he will not let it have this, too. He doesn’t think he could look Una in the eye if he came back to her without poetry. (He thinks, now, that perhaps he will not come back at all, but that hardly seems to matter -- he wants to be able to look at her, regardless of whether the fates see fit to allow it.)

When they finally reach London, they drop their packs at a hostel near Kings Cross, and then they’re off on the Underground. Their boasts become louder, and O’Leary, a boisterous private from Newfoundland, turns all his efforts to convincing Walter to join them in their revelry. It almost seems as though he’s going to make something of it, but then MacDougal steps in and tells him to put an end to it. 

Only last week, covered in blood and dirt and who knows what else, Walter had carried MacDougal’s wounded brother from no-man’s land; only one life saved when so many were lost, but it was something. They’d called him brave for that, though Walter knew he didn’t deserve those accolades. He’d felt no fear, at the time, so how could he possibly be brave? And afterwards -- afterwards, his dreams had been full of such terrible things. No, he was not brave, but Walter is glad now, all the same, that MacDougal will speak up for him.

Walter knows that the scene will repeat itself, though, if he stays with them longer, so he stays on the train at Tottenham Court and alights at Charing Cross instead. He makes his way down to the Thames, and follows the river to Westminster. That water, Walter thinks, will eventually flow into the Channel, where a current will take it into the Atlantic, and perhaps, just perhaps, a little part of that river will finds its way to Four Winds Harbour, and Mother and Una and Rilla will see it glinting in the sun.

He turns onto Westminster Bridge, and pauses to look out across the water when he is halfway across. The river smells foul, but it is a pretty sight, to see the few public lights still allowed reflected in it. If he holds his breath, he can almost feel the romance of it.

Walter remembers a night -- oh, it was lifetimes ago now, aeons, in another world untouched by war -- they had all made their way home together after a school concert. Faith had walked out ahead, and lead them all in a round of ballads from the old country. (Nothing indecent, nothing you couldn’t sing in front of the minister, but the old gossips in the village had whispered about it anyway, and tried to make a scandal of it.) Walter had let himself fall back, so he could watch them, but he’d ended up looking out at the water instead, as the distance between himself and and the others had grown greater. All the little lights of Glen St Mary, and the lighthouse across the Harbour, reflected in the calm water, as though there were another world beneath the surface.

He remembers thinking that there must be another world there, a mirror of their own. He wonders now if the Piper has taken them to that other world -- the same, almost the same, but distorted and never quite right.

On that night, so long ago, he’d come to a stop, lost in his dreams. He hadn’t even noticed when the others slipped out of sight. He might have stayed out there all night if he hadn’t felt a small warm hand slip into his, if he hadn’t turned to see Una Meredith, the only one of their number who’d noticed that Walter had fallen behind.

She hadn’t anything to him at first, she’d just smiled shyly, and they stood together, looking out over the village and the harbour. Walter found his voice first, in the end, and he told her a story about the people, so very like them, who lived beneath the glassy sheen of the water.

And then, and then -- dear, sweet Una had gathered her courage together, and asked him, in a soft tremulous voice, if he would write it down for her, so she could keep the story and read it when she felt sad. So Walter had spent whatever quiet time he could find over the next month in Rainbow Valley, writing his story of the girl from beneath the waves, who had found her way into the world above, and her counterpart, who had gone below.

He’d never shown that story to anyone else, not even Mother -- that one, at least, had been for Una alone. They had never spoken of it again, but Walter feels certain now that she kept it, and that she has it still.

The London night grows quiet for a moment, and Walter almost feels as though Una is there with him, slipping her hand into his, just as she had when they were children. In another life, Walter thinks, where he’d been able to stay in the world above the water, he and Una would have come here together, just as Mother and Father had done. Perhaps the fates are granting him a glimpse of that world now.

Walter feels a lightness in his chest, knowing that somewhere, the other world still exists, even if it is not for him, not anymore.

He knows, too, not to tempt the fates too much -- they have given him this, and he must not ask for more. So Walter turns away from the water and the reflected lights, and makes his way slowly back to the hostel on foot, where he finds, for a wonder, that he is not alone. For some of the men, at least, a very few of them, their boasts were only that. 

Strangely enough, O’Leary is one of the few. When Walter comes in, he is reading aloud, sharing his most recent letter from his wife with the others. It is a beautiful letter too, about the little daughter that O’Leary has yet to meet, a laughing brown-eyed babe who knows nothing of war. And Walter knows all at once that O’Leary will return to both of them, and there will be other children too, bright and happy, though their father will always carry a shadow in his eyes.

Walter climbs into his bunk, so luxuriously soft and clean after the trenches, and he lets O’Leary’s words wash over him. There is still poetry in the most unexpected of places, he thinks, even in this grim distorted world. Perhaps, even for those men who have not come back yet, there is poetry for them in what they do, though Walter cannot fathom it.

Walter’s eyes fall shut, and a thousand images fill his head; the trenches, the ferry, that night so long ago. He can hear the men boasting, making their crude jokes and he can hear them weeping for their mothers when it all becomes too much. He can see himself and Una all those years ago, and once again he can feel her hand in his; he can see her sweet, shy smile as sleep takes him to her breast.


End file.
